Mad Max filmmaker George Miller has acquired the rights

The latest project for Brendan McNamara, the outspoken former head of Team Bondi, will be titled Whore Of The Orient. The game was revealed by filmmaker and KMM Interactive owner George Miller.

According to the Australian Financial Review, Miller "has also acquired the rights to Team Bondi founder Brendan McNamara's next game, Whore Of The Orient."

Miller is best known for Mad Max, but Miller's KMM became home to a number of Team Bondi staff after the studio closed following the release of the critically acclaimed LA Noire. He calls McNamara a "brilliant mind."

McNamara himself mentioned the project in an interview with Eurogamer earlier this month, calling it "one of the great untold stories of the 20th Century". He also revealed it would a similar to size to LA Noire.

Miller is also working on a new Mad Max game, and spoke about the way games and films had become part of on package.

"Multi-platform, that's the thing," says Miller. "Create once; publish many times, on multiple platforms. You create a world and then you go in to all the different platforms - your iPhone, your iPad, on the net," he explained.

It also explains that development for Miller's Mad Max game was set to happen in Sweden, until Miller saw the work of Team Bondi.

"What's fascinating, though, is that Team Bondi immediately went to work on Happy Feet Two. People can move from a game to a movie and be completely at home, because it's the same skills, process - the same game."

McNamara became the centre of a working practices controversy when internal emails from the Team Bondi studio were leaked.

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I've seen the work that offline film folks do when they move over to games. Without a good couple of months of gaining experience working with realtime renderers and how they deal with things, the work they make simply cannot be used for production. Moving from game art to film may be easier in terms of not having the strict requirements of realtime rendering, but it's a completely different mindset in terms of understanding what kind of liberties one is then allowed to take that would never be feasible in a game. (There may well be other, more glaring, difficulties; my experience working in commercials is limited.)

I believe that calling them the same thing screams ignorance of both fields -- and it's a kind of thinking that really needs to be fought, because it results in, among other things, freelancers with film experience thinking that they can lecture game art courses. No points for guessing how employable the students would be.

I honestly think its easier for a game maker to create a movie than it is for a movie maker to create a game. However I dont belive its good to burn out a Brand. i belive they should go multiplatform only when called for.

Ha and ha. It's as if someone had an ultimate controversy checklist when thinking this through. To wit:

Types of possible people offended by this project (GO!):

Let's see now: Asians, women's rights groups, career ladies of the evening who aren't from the geographical location in the title, cranky journalists looking for a fight, games ratings boards worldwide, parents groups, Cable news shows looking to shit on games again, people who hate George Miller for not making a Mad Max movie every year since the last one (or who hate Happy Feet, period) and so forth and so on.

Whatever. As usual, I'll buy it if it's good, play it to point and laugh at it if it's not.

Whore of the Orient is a term used to describe Shanghai during in the 1920s and 30s, when the opium flowed freely and brothels made money off Western sailors and soldiers because of the "exotic" nature of Chinese women.

The sad thing is, with so many studios closing in Australia, McNamara's team is going to be one of the very few options open to game developers looking for jobs over there. Which means he probably will build a team, and probably will flog them to death yet again. If he were in Britain, or Canada, I don't think anyone would go anywhere near him. Or at least if they did, they'd walk out on him as soon as they realised how working practices were.

@Juilain: I actually knew that, but I was listing those folks who wouldn't get the reference at all (hey, who studies REAL history these days?) as they're always the first groups to take offense at stuff like this. Anyway, I'll be in the back munching popcorn as this one goes through the motions of being made. If it's done right, it'll be innovative, I'd gather. If it's not, well, it'll be more horror stories from the digital opium den...

@Julian: I was sure that it was a reference to something that was not offensive, but the current audience for the game (whatever that audience is) will not understand the reference. The reference could be included and explained in the game, but having it as the title will, at best, confuse people.

Hmm. Just because they by and large use the same software packages, it doesn't mean that film and game designers have the same skillsets (any more than plumbers and mechanics have the same skillsets because they both use spanners). I'd say it's writers that can move most easily between the two worlds.

Also amazed that Miller would have anything to do with this guy. Just lost a bit more respect for Miller. Mind you, as others have said above, it's unlikely that this game will see the light of day for several years, if at all. McNamara's rep is out of the bag now and it's unlikely that another Rockstar will sweep in and save his bacon. Unless, of course, part of the deal is that Miller is going to be quite happy to keep writing the paycheques.

Teeny, tiny necro here but I have to say: Try to sell me a game called "Whore of the Orient" and, were it not for Julian's post, I'd give you a free demo of my new product, called "A Very Hard Kick in the Testicles."

Now someone get McNamarra out of Australia and into a country where his employees can sue his face off if he takes the mick.